South Africa's Latest 'Reform' Goes Nowhere

September 28, 1987|By Kenneth W. Grundy, Special to The Sentinel

Last week a presidential commission in South Africa made public a set a proposals for the reform of racial segregation practices throughout the country. The report recommended a partial end of segregation in housing, public amenities, business districts and transportation. But don't hold your hats -- South Africa is not about to launch into a new era of change to end the years of racial bitterness and violence. South Africa doesn't work that way.

On the surface, the recommendations look significant. But the fine print and the context are all important.

First, it must be stressed that these are merely the recommendations of an advisory panel. The government is under no obligation to accept them. Although the commission has been working six years on the report, panelists have hedged their recommendations with escape clauses that enable government to weasel out of any implied promise to enact the commission's wishes.

For example, the commission proposes the repeal of the Group Areas Act, which mandates racially segregated neighborhoods in every town and city in the country. The commission recommends that the act be replaced by legislation that would allow each locality to decide for itself whether to establish multiracial housing areas.

The chances of reform here are minimal. Local government is established on a racial basis and most white South African politicians are not likely to risk integration at this point. The election results last May, with the swing to the right, provides an indicator of white opinion on housing segregation. But if a community should end segregation, the commission further suggests that such a decision be subject to veto by a government-appointed provincial administrator.

Much the same sort of constraint applies to the recommendation to scrap the national laws that designate segregated public amenities such as parks, beaches and theaters. Here again, local governments and individual entrepreneurs would be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to desegregate.

Changes would not be imposed on whites against their wishes, even though in most locales whites constitute but a fraction of the population. Nonetheless, in a South African context, it is reform that is proposed, not retreat. It is liberalization to conserve white power. Will it work? No.

South Africa is not the United States. In this country we live by compromise, reform, adjustment and fine-tuning the political system. That is because there is a basic and widespread acceptance of the ground rules and social values. As a result, we all, to some extent, participate in the process. Compromise is worked out by negotiation, involving the principal interested parties in any dispute. South Africa has no such procedure.

Change in South Africa, when it does come about, is mandated from above, prompted by pressure from below. The very term applied to such schemes, dispensations, implies rule from above, that which is handed down, that which is divinely determined.

The presidential commission has 60 panel members, not a single black African among them, even though black Africans make up more than 70 percent of the population. Even so, only two of the seven political parties represented on the panel signed the report. The Conservative Party, the official opposition in the all-white House of Assembly, rejected the report because it would lead, party leaders said, to the unthinkable, full racial integration. The Conservatives will work, no doubt, to defeat the proposals. To their credit, the moderate parties balked because they found the report too cautious.

The technique of presidential commissions is a common one in South African politics. The government appoints a commission. After considerable ''study,'' it makes recommendations. The government then decides which proposals it will seek to legislate, which it will modify, which it will ignore or reject. Delay is built into the system.

It is unlikely that even these mild suggestions will be enacted and implemented in full. The report is a test flight of sorts to see how various racial groups and factions respond. By the time changes are made, no one is satisfied. It was that way with a number of past commissions -- Coloured affairs, media, trade unions, education and so forth. This recent report is even less adventuresome than most.

It is reform by inches, when changes need to be measured by the mile. And until Pretoria admits that all its citizens must participate (not just be consulted) in the reform process, the real agenda will be revolutionary and the methods violent.